Brothers Far from Home

by Jean Little

  When she answered him, she sounded miserable.

  “I don’t want to leave him,” she started.

  I could hear the tears in her voice. Then I heard myself saying I would rock him until he dropped off, if she liked.

  “Oh, Eliza, would you?” she said, as if she were on a desert island and I were a ship coming to rescue her.

  Jack scooped the baby out of her arms and handed him over and next thing I knew, they were on their way down the stairs.

  Mother came to the door and asked if I needed help. I could tell she wanted to take over but I was having a lovely time. “I’m fine and so is Roo,” I said.

  He settled down and then he stretched out stiff and his face got red and the smell was awful! Oh, dear Reader, how I wished I had given him to Mother. But I managed to clean him up. How extremely disgusting babies can be! He went to sleep after I made him sweet and clean again. Then I actually rinsed out the mess.

  Am I not a superlative aunt? That’s one of those new words I vowed to learn. I’ve only learned about seven, but never mind. How do you like bamboozle or pulchritude? It isn’t always easy working them into a sentence. Did you know that sinister really means left-handed?

  Monday, May 13

  Tonight Rufus’s parents came for a visit. His father was attending a conference in Toronto and visiting some relatives, so his mother came along too. They decided they would make the trip here to see Rufus’s friend. It was hard to meet them, but we all tried to be comforting and show how we had loved Rufus. Then Rosemary came in with the baby and Mrs. West said, “Oh, my, what a darling little fellow.”

  Rosemary smiled but she had tears in her eyes.

  Jack reached out for little Rufus Hugh and snuggled him close. “Well, we can be thankful he doesn’t look like me,” he said, grinning his crooked grin.

  He actually made a joke out of the way he looks, which brought a big lump into my throat.

  Then the baby gave a gurgle of laughter, because we did, and put his hand up and batted Jack’s cheek and Jack kissed his tiny fingers.

  Dear Reader, Roo does not even see the scars. He just sees his daddy. And he loves him so. I felt happier at that moment than I have in weeks.

  They have only told me and Mother and Father about Rosemary being married to Rufus for those few days. I am not sure how they decided it but I think it was for Rufus Hugh’s sake. I heard Rosemary telling Mother once that he will have enough to contend with, with his family being on two sides of an ocean. She did not mention Jack’s scars but she did not need to. I asked Mother if they weren’t going to tell Rufus’s parents and she said, “It is not up to you and me, Eliza. Our job is to support them no matter what they decide. I would guess that they will tell them some time, but remember that they are complete strangers to Rosemary. Maybe our family is more than enough to adopt at the moment. We are quite a mob.”

  “Not so many compared to the Wesleys,” I said.

  Tuesday, May 14

  This morning Rosemary looked out the dining room window and said that the daffodils are finished blooming in her parents’ garden in Sussex, but we still have snowdrifts in the corners.

  “But here you still have the last of the daffodils to look forward to,” I told her.

  She laughed that lovely laugh of hers. “You are a grand little sister, Madam Eliza,” she said.

  I could feel myself blushing. She has a sister, Winifred, who is my age, and she says she misses her, so I suppose I am a comfort to her.

  But we surely are crowded. There just is no room for a new family, especially one so young.

  I used to think Hugo was the brother who understood me best, the one I loved most — and that was true. But I know now that Jack mattered more to me than I ever guessed. Maybe I shut him out back then, always looking to Hugo. When I saw Rosemary gazing at him lovingly, I knew how much he mattered to me too.

  But I have suddenly realized that I do have another brother. Charlie. Maybe he needs special loving with Roo stealing Jack’s attention the way he does. I’ll have to try to help. Susannah is his great comfort though.

  When Verity was here I heard her ask Mother what she thought of Jack’s having married Rosemary without a word to anyone.

  “I think it was sneaky,” she mumbled, not looking at Mother.

  Mother gave her one of those looks of hers, seeing straight through to her heart. “I am so proud of Jack,” she said quietly. “Rosemary is a dear girl. Now how about helping me fold the sheets, daughter.”

  Verity looked confused. But she got to work like a good nurse should when the matron speaks.

  Friday, May 24

  A baby fills up moments which should go to my dear Reader — that is why I have not written much lately. Also more schoolwork. High school is harder, that is certain. But my marks in English Composition are much higher. I have Grandmother and you to thank for that.

  We are studying Shakespeare too. My vocabulary is increasing by leaps and bounds.

  There is not an enormous amount of room left in this book and I would like to end when the War ends, or on Christmas Day. I also am going to a C.G.I.T. camp this summer. It stands for Canadian Girls in Training and we just started a group here. We have a uniform. We wear middy blouses and dark skirts. You know I like wearing middies. It will be fun meeting new girls who have not known Cornelia and Richard and my brothers. I won’t have to keep explaining to them.

  Wednesday, May 29

  It has been a difficult day for Uxbridge, Dear Reader. In April we heard that Colonel Sam Sharpe from the 116th was going to be coming back home on leave, but he didn’t even make it here. He got as far as Montreal, and had to go into hospital, and a few days later he was dead. I don’t know all the details, but there has been a lot of whispering about it. So many of the men from the 116th have been wounded or killed in the last while, it must have been very hard on Colonel Sharpe, maybe more than he could bear. It has been terrible for the people here in town. There are black armbands everywhere.

  Today was Colonel Sharpe’s funeral and just about the whole town turned out to watch the procession pass.

  It is so sad that he almost but didn’t quite make it home. What a tragedy.

  Saturday, September 21

  Poor, neglected dear Reader, I let months pass without a word. The Spanish Influenza has struck at even the people in Uxbridge. It seems so hard after all we have been through with the War.

  The schools in Toronto are closed, though ours here in town are still open. They say people are dying as if this were another war and disease were the enemy instead of the Kaiser. Verity is not training now but nursing flu victims full-time. Mother worries about her coming down with it, but Verity herself says she’s strong as an ox and don’t fuss. Aunt Agnes and her husband both contracted it and nearly died but pulled through. A niece of his did die. I barely knew her. She was twenty-two.

  This time I have a good reason for leaving such a long gap. All summer long, my journal was lost. I put it away before I went to C.G.I.T. camp and it vanished. I could not find it when I came home. It had fallen down behind a shelf in the wardrobe and was standing on its edge up against the wall, and did not show up until Moppy did a gigantic turning out of all the cupboards. Now it will have enough pages left, I am sure, so that I can make it to Christmas.

  I enjoyed that camp, by the way, and I made a couple of friends, but they don’t live here and I have not seen them since. I have written to them but neither of them likes writing.

  A great change came about in the family a month ago. Aunt Martha asked Jack and Rosemary if they would like to come and take care of Grandmother while she, Aunt M., goes to Business College. We were all flabbergasted. But it has solved so many problems. Jack is getting well again there and becoming a great father.

  Aunt Martha can now type one hundred words a minute. She even looks different, but I don’t know how to explain this change.

  Monday, October 7

  The War is not yet over but Jack says th
e victory is sure now, and it is only a matter of time. The Canadian soldiers made that big push at Amiens in the summer and that seems to have turned the tide. Father has put a big pin in his map at Amiens, and at Bourlon Wood and Cambrai. Jack says we really have the Germans on the run now, but he is saddened that the casualties are so high. I think of other families losing sons and brothers, feeling as we did after Vimy. It is so cruel for death to come just as you thought it was over.

  ARMISTICE DAY

  Monday, November 11, 1918

  I saved a few pages of my journal for this event.

  Hugo promised me it would end and we would win and he was right. He also said he would come home safe and sound and he didn’t. I am sure he tried his best.

  Now for the grand announcement … Listen to the fanfare of trumpets!

  THE GREAT WAR IS OVER!

  It is so wonderful, and yet so sad that Hugo is not here to celebrate. They signed the Armistice at eleven o’clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. We knew it was coming, but we did not get the actual news until late in the day. Oh, dear Reader, it is over at last.

  People in town just poured into the streets when the Armistice was finally announced. All that anticipation people had been feeling just spilled right out of the houses. The streets were so crowded you could barely walk along them. Bells were ringing. Somebody started a little victory parade and others joined in. Cars were going along the street with people hanging off the sides. People lit a big bonfire right in the middle of town. There has been much sadness to bear, and the revelry was just what people needed.

  Moppy said, “There’ll be sugar aplenty before we know it! You can have pound cake for your birthday, Eliza.”

  I love pound cake, but I was surprised that it was the first thing she thought of.

  Charlie said, “Does it mean no more weeding the garden?” How funny of him when it is November to think of next summer.

  Moppy was still going on about making my pound cake.

  “There won’t be much sugar in the store yet,” Father said, laughing at her. “At least, not at a decent price.”

  “I know, I know,” Moppy said, “but imagine it.”

  Another friend of Jack’s was injured a month ago. It seems more tragic because it was so close to the Armistice. Father says people will be killed even after the War officially ends.

  One of the Ducks from church came over after supper and said, “It is such a joy that the fighting is done at last and we can put it behind us and forget.”

  She beamed around at us, but none of us said a word. For us, it will never be all over. Hugo died. Jack was changed into somebody else. Rosemary lost Rufus. None of it can be put right.

  But there will come a day when no more will die. That is a good reason to celebrate even while we remember.

  And it has not been all tears. Verity has become a nurse. I am an aunt. Most of us escaped Spanish Influenza. Belle learned to read. She read The Little Red Hen to me last night without a single mistake. And Christmas is only a little over a month away. Maybe a family with children will buy the Webbs’ house, now that they have decided to settle out West and put it up for sale. Several people have been to look at it. Charlie says they think it is haunted, but Richard did not die. He is supposed to be doing better now they are out West. I wonder if Cornelia did end up with a calf to cosset.

  Wednesday, December 4

  A family is coming to live next door. The father is taking over Dr. Webb’s practice. He came yesterday. The family is moving in when school closes for the Christmas holidays. Nobody seems to know how many children or how old they are. Father has met the father and says he seems a fine fellow, but Father never asks the right questions. He is as irritating as Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

  There is a lot of painting and papering going on. It is exciting. The children keep spying out the windows and reporting every new development.

  Friday, December 6

  Susannah and Isaac saw a cat looking out the bay window next door. A big marmalade one. I don’t know which of them was more excited. The cat was calm. Susannah says it has golden eyes, but how she could see that from our house, I cannot fathom. Mother must have wondered too.

  “Susannah, no spying on the neighbours,” she said.

  It is a little late to be giving that order.

  Tuesday, December 17

  We are so busy getting ready for Christmas that I hardly have time to write a word. Such cooking as you cannot imagine! And a concert at Sunday school, a choir one and a school one. Oh, dear Reader, I have only a few pages left to fill. I think I will save the last bit until Christmas Day so I can end where I began.

  Christmas Day

  Something strange and wonderful has happened and I still cannot believe it. I think I have found you, dear Reader. I was letting Isaac out this morning when, all at once, I heard something which froze me where I stood. It was a tune played on a penny whistle. The next instant I was running down the steps into the garden and staring over the hedge. There under the big oak tree in the Webbs’ front lawn stood a girl.

  It was you, Tamsyn. I thought of so many names for my dear Reader, but I never once thought of Tamsyn.

  You had found my whistle caught deep in the hedge. It was not on the ground or near the top, as I thought it must be, but wedged in among some dead branches which were tangled up in a tight knot in the middle, so no wonder I missed it.

  “Hello,” you said, holding it out. “I’m Tamsyn Taylor. We moved in last night and I just found this. It was dusty but I’ve wiped it with my hanky and it still plays. Is it yours?”

  I walked over to you and took it and I said, “It’s a whistle to banish the dark. My brother Hugo gave it to me when I was five. It doesn’t really banish the dark, but it helped me not to be afraid. I threw it away when he was killed at Vimy and then, when I tried to find it, I couldn’t.”

  When I finished, your eyes had tears in them. You told me about your cousin Edward who died of his wounds at Ypres away back at the beginning, when we were little girls who still thought war was gloriously exciting. I didn’t cry, but I felt as though we had been friends for years instead of just minutes. I was shivering but I could not bear to go back inside.

  You and I are almost exactly the same age. And you have a big family too.

  “They call me Monkey, short for Monkey in the Middle,” you said, laughing.

  I did not tell you Hugo’s nickname for me, not yet. But I must have gasped. There are not seven of you, just five, two older and two tiny.

  I have finished this journal, but I will keep it forever. You can read it if you want to. After all, dear Reader, I wrote it for you. I already know you like to read. I felt a jump of joy when you told me about reading Nobody’s Girl and crying. I felt a pang, too, remembering poor Cornelia who would not understand crying over a story.

  The notes of the penny whistle sounding in the garden eased the emptiness inside me. Did you know you were playing “Taps”? Maybe it is a message from Hugo.

  All is well.

  Safely rest.

  God is nigh.

  What Became of Them All

  After the Great War, life gradually improved for the Bates family. Eliza stuck to her resolve to train as a teacher. She taught fifth grade and loved it. When she was twenty-four she was asked to tutor a handicapped boy who was the son of a minister. He was a widower whose wife had died of tuberculosis. Eliza fell in love with the boy’s father and eventually married him — becoming, to her horror, a minister’s wife. Although she never had children of her own, she and her stepson loved each other dearly. Her husband’s congregation grew fond of her even though she seldom invited “Ducks” to supper. (She did rescue stray animals, and anyone visiting the manse would come away covered with dog hair.) Eliza’s laughter and unfailing kindness made her popular anyway, especially with the young people in the church.

  Although Eliza lost touch with Cornelia Webb before she finished high school, she and her “d
ear Reader,” Tamsyn, became close friends. Even after they moved away from each other they wrote letters back and forth all their lives.

  After the War, Verity went overseas to work with war orphans. She did not marry until she was middle-aged, and then she astonished everyone by wedding a Belgian doctor with whom she had worked. They settled in Europe but managed to visit Canada whenever they could afford the passage.

  In 1929 Charlie emigrated to New Zealand and Susannah went along to keep house for him. She married a sheep rancher there and had twin girls. Her husband was killed in a flash flood seven years after they were married, but she and Charlie lived together happily. At the outbreak of World War II he went overseas with a New Zealand regiment. Susannah looked after the twins and the sheep until Charlie returned to her in 1946 without a scratch and with a decoration for bravery.

  Belle grew passionately fond of music and determined to become a concert pianist. She lacked the stamina to make her dream come true, however, and she ended up giving piano lessons to children. They adored her. She never married, but stayed home and, after her mother’s death, she and Moppy kept house for her father.

  The baby, Rufus Hugh, was always a great favourite with his grandfather. He surprised everyone by turning into a brilliant scholar and eventually entering the ministry. He became a famous preacher and a grand storyteller.

  Jack and Rosemary’s younger son, John, loved the land and grew up to take over the family farm. Rosemary also had a little girl whom she named Eliza Winifred, after her two sisters.

  After the war ended, Rev. Sam Bates was a favourite with men who had returned from the Front, especially those who had suffered injury or those so haunted by their memories that they had trouble returning to peacetime life. He did not glorify their experiences, but listened with patience and sympathy to their stories of suffering and fear, comradeship and loss, love of home and love of vanished friends. Families whose sons were comforted by him became staunch supporters of the minister.